As I was re-reading "The Keeper of the Keys" once more, I really stuck on one moment:

"You never told him? Never told him what was in the letter Dumbledore left for him?" (some other stuff cut here)
"Kept what from me?" said Harry eagerly.
"STOP! I FORBID YOU!" yelled Uncle Vernon in panic.
Aunt Petunia gave a gasp of horror.
..."Harry--Yer a wizard."

The whole time Vernon had been standing up to Hagrid, not exactly an easy thing to do. We tend to read this as Vernon being a mean and biased individual who doesn't want Harry to know he is magic because that would be something good for Harry/Vernon hates wizardry and "abnormal" things.

Which may be partially true, but would simply keeping good away from Harry or a bias really cause a man to be brave enough to try to prevent Hagrid, from all people, from telling Harry?

I think Vernon could be trying to keep Petunia from re-living one of the worst moments of her life: when Lily found out she was a witch but Petunia was not. Perhaps Vernon has more insight into Petunia than even Petunia does. So he was actually caring for her and even loving her by trying to keep Hagrid from talking.

This gasp of horror, I think, was Petunia re-living the moment when Lily found out about her powers, when Lily became special. Exactly what Vernon had been trying to prevent.

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"Just one more, Master Harry, for luck?"

I haven't reached that chapter yet but it's certainly another moment where hindsight really does make it seem so different. It's very strange to be seeing Vernon in a new light lol

Oh my gosh! YES! I'm going to have to re-read that now. Thanks for the new perspective!

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"I am not worried, Harry," said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. "I am with you."

Ooooh yes. The Dursleys are portrayed as not very nice people and there's no excuse for how they treat Harry. But in a way, I can sort of understand why. We don't know what Vernon knows about magic but I guess nothing good. Petunia would know more but her contact with the magical world is somewhat skewed by her jealousy of Lily, Snape and his dropping the branch on her and well...the death of Lily (who knows how much Petunia knew of the first war). All in all, a rather traumatic impression of the wizarding world, especially once she realised she couldn't be part of it. Vernon might not know the details, but he knows it's a topic that upsets her.

If Hagrid didn't say the magic word, then it wouldn't make it real. Vernon was trying to protect Petunia from all the past pain she thought she'd gotten away from.

It's rather sad really because in a way they had much to fear. They're rather defenseless against magic.

I think the Dursleys border on near cartoonish levels of nastiness but Rowling, in depicting them in a loving relationship and giving us the background on Petunia balances it out and takes off the edge of their cartoonish meanness with their humanity. I wouldn't hesitate to say that Vernon's motives are for protecting his wife, but his approach is still nasty and seriously screwed up.

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SpellSun12811
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Do you think that it is possible that the Dursleys are characterised in such a way as to make the reader reject the muggle world and draw them more to the wizarding world? Other muggle world encounters aren't nearly as detailed as those with the Dursleys, and with the exception of the beginning of the first book, what little there is are not as distorted when it comes to exaggeration of behaviour by the muggles...

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"There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them."

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it's a completely different perspective, but yes definitively a total possible one. We just don't realize that because they don't treat Harry well it means they don't love each other and his son. We just saw how cruel they are to Harry and forget about the rest...they can worry about one another as a lovely married couple!

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Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open. ~ Dumbledore GoF

Pottermore: DraconisCat30808
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Even though we're supposed to dislike the Dursley's for Harry's sake during the novels, I think this shows that Vernon and Petunia are really just humans trying to survive. I think we all have aspects of life that we like to plug our ears and say "lalalalalalala I'm not listening!" when someone brings it up.

Plus, with the new information from Pottermore about this couple, we see that they really do love each other, which is a prominent theme throughout the novels.

Sure he does! I don't think Dursleys are truly one-dimensional. Behind Harry's POV, humiliating description, more simplistic & child-friendly storytelling in the earlier books, there was always a deep, real backstory. Caring for your family is a normal thing to do. As a movie Dumbledore would say: “I don't find it curious at all ”
However, I don't think Vernon digs that deep in his wife’s psychology. Like midnight said, he probably just senses that this subject upsets her and doesn’t want see her hurt. Speaking of Petunia, she has a lot of reasons to be horrified in this scene. My own take was that as Dursleys look pretty scared (who wouldn’t), she made “gasp of horror” out of fear for her husband when it seems he had gone too far.
Vernon act so bravely not from a desire to make Harry unhappy at any cost, of course. I think Vernon feels like his and his family's life style is threatened and fiercely fights for it. Try to look at things from his POV: he is young, happily married, successful in his career, his life got established. Then one day there is a baby over his house doorstep to turn it all upside down. Magic is against Vernon's nature, he doesn't want anything to do with it. Still, he supports his wife in decision to take this baby which means the end of carefree life for him. He clung to the comforting hope to “put a stop to that rubbish” so it will not affect his life, but crazy things keep happening to Harry. I think that is why he was treated so badly. Out of frustration, perplexity and fear.
How can you fight a mysterious unknown force you can't even see? They needed to modify it to a form they could control (at least get illusion of control) so Harry became a personification of magic. That is why they blamed Harry in everything when it is clear he can't regrow his hair on purpose. And they locked him, as later his school equipments. When school stuff became “carrier of evil” Harry himself turned less dangerous in their mind. What they tried to achieve is to keep magic away, lock it. But kept failing every time - and it was getting only worse. Vernon must have loved Petunia very much to choose staying with her and live a life of constant stress.

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It's real for us

What parts make you think he isn't worried over Petunia?